What are you going to be when you grow up?
This question never seems to disappear. When you are little it is easy to pick an answer: teacher, zookeeper, astronaut, astronaut that teaches people about zoo animals in space. However, in college things change. That question takes on a new kind of weight.
Tonight Hope’s annual Critical Issues Symposium begins. Right now, however, I am going to return to a lecture I attended at last year’s symposium: Technology and the Future of Being Human.
My First Year Seminar professor highly recommended attending a session by one of his former students, Allison Rockey, who graduated from Hope in 2004 majoring in Religion and Accounting.
Today, Rockey works as the Director of Programming for a digital news site called Vox. The Classics nerd in me rejoices at their name which is the Latin word for “voice.” It’s a fitting name as Vox delivers news in a unique voice that is different than your traditional news site.
When Rockey spoke at Hope last year she explained Vox as using data journalism: helping people understand major issues happening in the world around them in ways that are understandable and interesting.
They use a lot of videos, maps and something they call card stacks which break down the main points of a story. I got excited when I saw they were added to Snapchat’s Discover section. Today they had an interesting first person piece on anxiety that was actually posted on their website in July, but they reformatted it for the Snapchat platform.
Rockey made her way from being the Marketing and Communications director at a church doing work to expand their digital presence, among other things, to being Director of Programming at a digital news site.
One of the things she said that stood out to me the most:
Your dream job might not exist yet, but when it comes along you’ve got to work hard and stand out to grab the opportunity.
So, I have no clue what I am going to be when I grow up. However, it is encouraging to hear people like Allison Rockey talk about how, when they were faced with life after college, they did not know where they would be headed, let alone know that their dream job had yet to be created.
Sure, not knowing is scary, but there is always hope.
Thanks for reading!
~Erin
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